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In the past days, I’ve been watching the events in America unfolding. We’ve just gone back from a several week long US road trip (15 states, 3500 miles) and we ’ve been in many of the cities in which they are taking down the monuments at these very moments.
Here is my perspective as a European, following the events in the news. The Charlottesville incident was all too familiar to me – as you know here in the EU we’ve already had 9 similar vehicle attacks just since 2016 (the most recent being in Barcelona) with the dead count well over the hundreds now in total. What I saw in the news from Charlottesville was a tragic event – it’s always horrific when the victims are innocent people and bystanders. However, as much as such an event is tragic, the overwhelming reaction from the media and from independent tech companies is very strange to me. Is racism and white supermacy an everyday threat in America, just like the Islamist terror in Europe? I don’t think so (see my personal notes in the end).
Here in the EU we have been experiencing a nightmare for over 3 years now with a constant fear of impending terror. Many people are in fear to visit even the major tourist spots now. Still, neither the EU media nor any of the tech companies expressed such a strong opinion against these terror acts, which are all tied to one extremist group. On the contrary, they tried to keep many of the Islamic terror acts in secret from the public and the tech companies keep taking down videos and posts that are not in favour of refugees.
Are the deaths of our families, women and children worthless? It doesn’t matter which side are you on, if you have the most basic concern for human life and a basic sense for equal judgement, you should condemn this double standard from these companies and the media!
A personal note: we’ve traveled all over South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Lousiana and Texas – we saw and experienced the inner-city problems, especially in Baltimore. We have seen devastation caused by drugs and gang violence in American cities. The problems are real. What we haven’t experienced tough was racism in any form. Racism is not the biggest problem in America, my honest opinion is that it’s the more minor problems in your country right now. I’ve met with many American people on the streets, I conducted interviews with them and my opinion is – after been to many parts of the world - that the average Americans are extremely tolerant people.
We visited the most notorious parts of inner cities and even in those areas I found that the majority of black people live in better conditions than a big chunk of the population in the Eastern parts of Europe.
It seems very strange and rather sinister to me that the media seem to be more involved in stirring up the emotions of the opposite sides, instead of trying to pacify them when you have such tensions in your country. This is just my opinion without obviously any American political preference.
Without getting into a long winded explanation, the establishment is using a 'scorched earth' policy and pseudo-religious tactics to suppress nationalism and any discussions and opposition to mass immigration and the resulting sociopolitical, economic and cultural change it results in.
Thanks for your observations Easternman. You're imperfect English - no offense - may be attacked. Don't worry about it. or, perhaps you truly meant "pacified" in your next to last sentence.
Your perspective is interesting but I'm going to challenge some things about it.
You seem to think Charlottesville got more attention than what's happened in Barcelona but I don't think this is the case. Like with all of these recent terror attacks, the news binges on it for a few days and then we turn back to "normal course of business." The normal course of business for our country... is worrying about what happens in our country, like Charlottesville, North Korean threat, Trump's administration, jobs, healthcare, etc. and all the other things that have been in the news before Barcelona happened.
The average American is indeed very tolerant, but that doesn't mean that racism (or any -ism) is dead in this country. That's cool and all that you walked around and got to know the locals, but most people aren't going to tell a stranger (much less a foreigner), "I'm racist." You talked to random people for a few weeks... let's keep it in perspective.
Is racism in America an everyday threat, versus Islamic terrorism? I'd say yes, as our president has even said. "This has been happening for a long time. It's not about Trump, or Obama." Whatever your thoughts are about "both sides" being to blame.... there have been sides for awhile and it's a persistent American tension. Terrorist threats are no less important, but just like Islamic tensions are a day to day issue in Europe, immigration and racism are every day issues for Americans. Hence you have many people in here who want to talk about immigration in threads day in and out... that affects us all every day, whether you're for or against. In comparison, terrorist threats happen every few months at best.
In the past days, I’ve been watching the events in America unfolding. We’ve just gone back from a several week long US road trip (15 states, 3500 miles) and we ’ve been in many of the cities in which they are taking down the monuments at these very moments.
Here is my perspective as a European, following the events in the news. The Charlottesville incident was all too familiar to me – as you know here in the EU we’ve already had 9 similar vehicle attacks just since 2016 (the most recent being in Barcelona) with the dead count well over the hundreds now in total. What I saw in the news from Charlottesville was a tragic event – it’s always horrific when the victims are innocent people and bystanders. However, as much as such an event is tragic, the overwhelming reaction from the media and from independent tech companies is very strange to me. Is racism and white supermacy an everyday threat in America, just like the Islamist terror in Europe? I don’t think so (see my personal notes in the end).
Here in the EU we have been experiencing a nightmare for over 3 years now with a constant fear of impending terror. Many people are in fear to visit even the major tourist spots now. Still, neither the EU media nor any of the tech companies expressed such a strong opinion against these terror acts, which are all tied to one extremist group. On the contrary, they tried to keep many of the Islamic terror acts in secret from the public and the tech companies keep taking down videos and posts that are not in favour of refugees.
Are the deaths of our families, women and children worthless? It doesn’t matter which side are you on, if you have the most basic concern for human life and a basic sense for equal judgement, you should condemn this double standard from these companies and the media!
A personal note: we’ve traveled all over South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Lousiana and Texas – we saw and experienced the inner-city problems, especially in Baltimore. We have seen devastation caused by drugs and gang violence in American cities. The problems are real. What we haven’t experienced tough was racism in any form. Racism is not the biggest problem in America, my honest opinion is that it’s the more minor problems in your country right now. I’ve met with many American people on the streets, I conducted interviews with them and my opinion is – after been to many parts of the world - that the average Americans are extremely tolerant people.
We visited the most notorious parts of inner cities and even in those areas I found that the majority of black people live in better conditions than a big chunk of the population in the Eastern parts of Europe.
It seems very strange and rather sinister to me that the media seem to be more involved in stirring up the emotions of the opposite sides, instead of trying to pacify them when you have such tensions in your country. This is just my opinion without obviously any American political preference.
Good thoughtful question. iMO some factions did not like how our presidential election turned out and are seeking to make this presidency difficult in the hope that the president will resign, be impeached, or perceived as ineffective. The media is just one of those factions and they are actively participating in this effort
For 16 years we (US) had to deal with everyone else's issues rather than our own. For the first 8 years we had to deal with a post 9/11 life and a POTUS who jumped us into two wars without looking and deal with Middle East issues that the US created and opened up the Arab Spring. Most of the US issues took a backseat to it as we felt the financial part hit us towards the end of it. The next 8 years a new POTUS arrived who told us we were going to the forefront of his administration. He lied. The Middle East and Muslims became our lead issue followed by a badly designed Health Care system that got worse as each year passed. This year we got a new POTUS who promised that we would be the number one item on his list. No matter the outcome of his decisions, we've been first on his list. Charlottesville was inevitable. If it wasn't Charlottesville it would've been some other city. The statue was simply a topic. The people of the US have been waiting for 16 years to finally have a voice and the cork finally blew last week. Whenever someone has a red faced argument, people yell about what's on their mind at that point. Did last weekend really resolve anything at the national level? IMHO not really. What it did do was to let us yell and just get a whole of emotions out of our system. When someone has a strong emotional period whether it be yelling or crying, one tends to feel better as the quiet time sets in afterwards and discussions follow soon after. If people think this wasn't coming to a head soon, then all they have to do is look at Road Rage growth over the past 16 years. OTOH Europe got to deal with their internal problems over the last 16 years and did deal with them as they came into the open. The US is not finished yelling yet, but it will simmer down and we will finally deal with our own issues.
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